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OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

SOUTH AMERICAN DOMINIONS.

INSULAR CHILI 282 Archipelago of Chiloe 283

ARAUCANIA OR INDIAN CHILI 287

ISLANDS ON THE COASTS of Spanish South America 294

Plate and Description of comparative Altitudes of the Mountains 301

List of Works on or relating to Spanish America, quoted in this publication, &c. 305

Table of the Latitudes and Longitudes of the principal Places 311

Summary of the Population 319

Wealth and Revenue 320

INDEX 321

ERRATA.

SPANISH AMERICA.

SOUTH AMERICAN DOMINIONS.

Caraccas is a name taken from that of a tribe of Indians, and given to a country which includes New Andalusia, or Cumana, with Margarita, Barcelona, Venezuela, or Caraccas Proper, Maracaybo and Coro, on the coast of the Caribbean sea, Varinas and Spanish Guiana in the interior.

BOUNDARIES AND EXTENT.

It is bounded on the north by the Caribbean sea, east by the Atlantic, south by Peru and Dutch Guiana, and west by the kingdom of Santa F? or New Granada; its extent may be computed from the twelfth to the eighteenth degrees of north latitude, and occupies a space extending over a surface equal to 48,000 square leagues.

POLITICAL DIVISIONS AND GOVERNMENT.

DISCOVERY AND HISTORY.

The coast of this country was originally discovered by Columbus in 1498, during his third expedition. Several adventurers succeeding in exploratory voyages on this part of the continent, the Spanish government came to the determination of endeavouring to place colonies on its soil. These being chiefly ill conducted, and managed by priests unacquainted with the manners and customs of the natives, did not succeed, and it was found necessary to endeavour to subdue the inhabitants by force. When this was partially effected, and Spanish settlers were placed in some security, the management of the new colonies was entrusted to the care of the Welsers, a German mercantile company. These people exercised, for a length of time, an uncontrolled sway over the unfortunate Indians and the colonists. Their excess of punishment and their fraud becoming at last notorious, the king of Spain deprived them of their power, in 1550, and appointed an officer of the crown to administer justice to the oppressed.

Don Simon Bolivar, a native of the country, possessing much property and considerable influence, has been the great leader of this revolt, styling himself president and commander in chief of the united provinces of Venezuela. Obtaining from the congress of a neighbouring state an army of 600 men, he marched against Monteverde, the captain-general who had beheaded Miranda and punished his colleagues, and meeting with few obstacles to surmount entered the city of Caraccas as conqueror, on the 4th August, 1813. The captain-general fled, and refusing to treat with the insurgents, as derogatory to the honour of the master he represented, remained quiet until he received from Spain a reinforcement of 1200 men; he then attacked the city, but was repulsed with the loss of nearly his whole army, and himself severely wounded. In discussing the historical facts relating to South America in general, we have entered more at large upon this subject. At present Bolivar occupies the lower parts of the Orinoco, having made the town of Angostura his head-quarters.

We have chosen the description of the kingdom of Peru as the proper place to give detail of the general historical facts relating to the whole of South America, as it was in that kingdom that the Spanish government first took a consolidated form; we shall, therefore, at present recur to the metropolis, description, and political divisions of the captain-generalship we are now engaged in treating of.

CAPITAL.

The city of CARACCAS, or as it is written by the Spaniards, CARACAS, is the metropolis of this vast region, and has given its name, within a late period, to the whole government. It is situated in 10? 30' 15" north-latitude, and 67? 4' 45" west longitude, the highest square being elevated 2903 feet above the level of the sea, at the commencement of a fine plain or valley, which extends nine miles to the eastward, and has nearly the same breadth, through which runs the river Guayra; the site of the town is an uneven ground with a steep slope; it was founded by Diego de Losada, in 1567, and called Santiago de Leon de Caracas, in order to have a permanent settlement in the neighbourhood of some gold mines, which were imagined to be very productive. The ground is so precipitous, that the few carriages which the inhabitants possess are little used. The Anauco, the Catache, and the Caraguatu, three small streams, run through the city from north to south; the second of these furnishes the water used by the labouring classes, the rich inhabitants having that useful fluid brought from a stream about three miles off, supposed to possess peculiar medicinal qualities.

The streets of Caraccas are straight, wide, and intersect each other at right angles; the houses very handsome and spacious; there are some fine squares, and a handsome cathedral, with eight churches and five convents. This city is the seat of the metropolitan, archbishop of Caraccas, and contains a royal audience, which governs the civil affairs of the captain-generalship, and of which court the officer holding the reins of government is always president, it being in fact a sort of legislative council, composed of the governor and great state officers. The number of inhabitants of this celebrated town are stated not to exceed 20,000 at present, owing to the tremendous loss sustained by the earthquake in 1812, and to the recent sanguinary events which have taken place. The theatre of Caraccas holds from fifteen to eighteen hundred persons, and is well frequented; the female part of the audience occupy the pit, and are separated from the men. The pleasantest part of the year is during the months of November and December, when the air is cool, and the mornings very fine, but the evenings are foggy and damp. During the months of June and July, the nights are beautiful and serene; in fact, the climate during the whole year is so good, that this city may be said to enjoy a perpetual spring.

This state of the atmosphere is finely contrasted with the dreary and savage appearance of the mountains in the neighbourhood, the tremendous precipice of the Silla, or Saddle, and the confused appearance of the country on the right of the plain; which plain, called Chacao, is highly cultivated in many parts, and affords the principal objects of subsistence to the town. In it grows the plantain, the orange, the apple, the apricot, the coffee-tree, the sugar-cane, the pine-apple, the strawberry, vine, peach, quince, maize, corn, vegetables, rice, &c. and in this fertile valley, numerous herds of cattle abound, it having been computed that forty thousand head are annually brought to the market, for the purpose of being salted, and of immediate consumption.

The only inconvenience felt during this eternal spring is from the effects of certain winds, which cause the weather to prove occasionally inconstant, and produce low nervous fevers, and other disorders incident to a variable atmosphere. The yellow fever sometimes, though rarely, extends its ravages to this place, and once lasted for sixteen months, and in 1802 was fatal to the garrison newly arrived from Europe.

The season of periodical rain lasts during the months of April, May and June; but hail is seldom or ever known oftener than once in four or five years.

This capital, placed in so charming a climate, compared to many others in the same latitude, has bean subjected to a scourge, which no beauty of situation, or salubrity of the air, can ever compensate. In the year 1812 the whole city was nearly destroyed by an awful earthquake. On the 26th of March, in that year, the population of Leon de Caraccas amounted to fifty thousand souls; in a short space, even in the passing of a moment, these devoted people were reduced to thirty eight thousand, and as if an enormous mine had been exploded under the city, the earth was upheaved to a tremendous height, and twelve thousand persons were swallowed up, or perished amid the ruins of their houses.

The survivors have been ever since busily engaged in repairing the damages, and rebuilding the city, which is now rapidly advancing to its former state, and the population annually increasing.

The flat space on which La Guayra stands is only about 900 feet in breadth, from the precipice at the back to the sea, and the whole aspect of the place is arid, gloomy and unpleasant.

This town is surrounded on the sea side by works and batteries, some of which are very strong, and contain within their limits two streets, parallel to each other, with 8000 inhabitants.

It may be said, that this port is one of the hottest places in Spanish America; the yellow-fever had, however, only commenced its destructive ravages within ten or twelve years, before which time, it was unknown; some are of opinion, that it was brought there after the port was opened to foreign commerce, by the seamen from the United States; others, that it was caused by the overflowing of the river Guayra, which filled the cellars and deep places with water, that soon became stagnant, and exhaled putrid effluvia. However it may be, the inhabitants and strangers who reside at La Guayra, have suffered dreadfully of late years from this disorder.

DESCRIPTION OF THE FEATURES, &C. OF THE COUNTRY.

The chain of the Andes, traversing the whole territory in the direction of its shores, elevates itself the most in the western parts; and is lost in the sea opposite to the great island of Trinidad, which is itself very mountainous.

The average height of the Cordillera of Caraccas may be estimated at 4500 feet, though it occasionally exceeds 8000; its breadth varies from ten to twenty leagues, and it forms some extensive and beautiful valleys. Owing to this elevation of the land, the heat is not so insupportable as might be imagined from its situation; along the coast it is very great; but ascending gradually into the higher regions, the traveller finds it sensibly diminish, and observes with delight, the vegetable productions of different countries, concentrated in a small space. The great valley or plain of the Orinoco bounds the Cordillera to the south, and far from possessing those elevated lands which characterise the southern portion of the New World, Nature has here spread the country into immense flats, or savannahs, known by the name of Los Llanos .

In these plains innumerable herds of cattle are fed, attended by the slaves or servants of the owners, who reside in the towns and villages. These people, living entirely in the desert, have become little better than so many wandering savages; they pass the greater part of their time on horseback, and are said to infest the roads on the borders of the savannahs with their robberies. The heat in the valley of the Orinoco is intense, the thermometer rising even to 115?.

The seasons are divided into rainy and dry, the rainy season lasting from March to November, not however, without ceasing, as there are many days in that period, in which no rain falls; during the time of incessant rain, it does not descend in drizzling misty showers, but comes with such volume and rapidity, that streams, which have been dried to their very channels, now assume in the short space of a few hours, the appearance of large rivers; the plains bordering the Orinoco, and its tributary streams, are inundated by seas of fresh water extending three or four hundred miles in length.

The ORINOCO, or ORONOCO, is not only amongst the largest, but the finest of South American rivers, and is chiefly distinguished by its very singular and intricate course. Its sources are not well known, but according to La Cruz, it rises in a small lake called Ipava, in 5? 5' north-latitude, and thence winding upon itself, enters the lake of Parima to the south-east, and issues by two outlets towards the north and south; on the western shores of the lake; receiving the Guaviara, it bends north, then north-east, and embracing the Meta, the Apura, the Arauca, and the other large streams above-mentioned, with thousands of smaller ones, falls into the Atlantic ocean, by numerous estuaries, opposite the island of Trinidad, its chief mouth being considerably to the south-east of that island. This noble river communicates with the Maranon, and it is supposed, that a stream called the Siaba flows from the south-west of the lake Parima into the Negro, and that to the south-east of the same lake, the Rio Blanco, or Parima, joins the Rio Negro also, this last communicating with the Maranon by means of the Joa Parana.

The periodical inundation of the Orinoco begins in April and ceases in August; in October the flood is low, arriving at its shallowest point in February; the rise is equal to thirteen fathoms at the distance of ninety leagues from the ocean. The mouth of the great estuary is in 8? 30' north-latitude, and 59? 50' west longitude.

The caymed and languished. Else, how is it that the North, under the operations of a policy directly the opposite of ours, has surpassed us in almost everything great and good, and left us standing before the world, an object of merited reprehension and derision?

For one, we are heartily ashamed of the inexcusable weakness, inertia and dilapidation everywhere so manifest throughout our native section; but the blame properly attaches itself to an usurping minority of the people, and we are determined that it shall rest where it belongs. More on this subject, however, after a brief but general survey of the inequalities and disparities that exist between those two grand divisions of the country, which, without reference to the situation that any part of their territory bears to the cardinal points, are every day becoming more familiarly known by the appropriate appellation of

THE FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES.

It is a fact well known to every intelligent Southerner that we are compelled to go to the North for almost every article of utility and adornment, from matches, shoepegs and paintings up to cotton-mills, steamships and statuary; that we have no foreign trade, no princely merchants, nor respectable artists; that, in comparison with the free states, we contribute nothing to the literature, polite arts and inventions of the age; that, for want of profitable employment at home, large numbers of our native population find themselves necessitated to emigrate to the West, whilst the free states retain not only the larger proportion of those born within their own limits, but induce, annually, hundreds of thousands of foreigners to settle and remain amongst them; that almost everything produced at the North meets with ready sale, while, at the same time, there is no demand, even among our own citizens, for the productions of Southern industry; that, owing to the absence of a proper system of business amongst us, the North becomes, in one way or another, the proprietor and dispenser of all our floating wealth, and that we are dependent on Northern capitalists for the means necessary to build our railroads, canals and other public improvements; that if we want to visit a foreign country, even though it may lie directly South of us, we find no convenient way of getting there except by taking passage through a Northern port; and that nearly all the profits arising from the exchange of commodities, from insurance and shipping offices, and from the thousand and one industrial pursuits of the country, accrue to the North, and are there invested in the erection of those magnificent cities and stupendous works of art which dazzle the eyes of the South, and attest the superiority of free institutions!

The North is the Mecca of our merchants, and to it they must and do make two pilgrimages per annum--one in the spring and one in the fall. All our commercial, mechanical, manufactural, and literary supplies come from there. We want Bibles, brooms, buckets and books, and we go to the North; we want pens, ink, paper, wafers and envelopes, and we go to the North; we want shoes, hats, handkerchiefs, umbrellas and pocket knives, and we go to the North; we want furniture, crockery, glassware and pianos, and we go to the North; we want toys, primers, school books, fashionable apparel, machinery, medicines, tombstones, and a thousand other things, and we go to the North for them all. Instead of keeping our money in circulation at home, by patronizing our own mechanics, manufacturers, and laborers, we send it all away to the North, and there it remains; it never falls into our hands again.

In one way or another we are more or less subservient to the North every day of our lives. In infancy we are swaddled in Northern muslin; in childhood we are humored with Northern gewgaws; in youth we are instructed out of Northern books; at the age of maturity we sow our "wild oats" on Northern soil; in middle-life we exhaust our wealth, energies and talents in the dishonorable vocation of entailing our dependence on our children and on our children's children, and, to the neglect of our own interests and the interests of those around us, in giving aid and succor to every department of Northern power; in the decline of life we remedy our eye-sight with Northern spectacles, and support our infirmities with Northern canes; in old age we are drugged with Northern physic; and, finally, when we die, our inanimate bodies, shrouded in Northern cambric, are stretched upon the bier, borne to the grave in a Northern carriage, entombed with a Northern spade, and memorized with a Northern slab!

But it can hardly be necessary to say more in illustration of this unmanly and unnational dependence, which is so glaring that it cannot fail to be apparent to even the most careless and superficial observer. All the world sees, or ought to see, that in a commercial, mechanical, manufactural, financial, and literary point of view, we are as helpless as babes; that, in comparison with the Free States, our agricultural resources have been greatly exaggerated, misunderstood and mismanaged; and that, instead of cultivating among ourselves a wise policy of mutual assistance and co-operation with respect to individuals, and of self-reliance with respect to the South at large, instead of giving countenance and encouragement to the industrial enterprises projected in our midst, and instead of building up, aggrandizing and beautifying our own States, cities and towns, we have been spending our substance at the North, and are daily augmenting and strengthening the very power which now has us so completely under its thumb.

It thus appears, in view of the preceding statistical facts and arguments, that the South, at one time the superior of the North in almost all the ennobling pursuits and conditions of life, has fallen far behind her competitor, and now ranks more as the dependency of a mother country than as the equal confederate of free and independent States. Following the order of our task, the next duty that devolves upon us is to trace out the causes which have conspired to bring about this important change, and to place on record the reasons, as we understand them,

WHY THE NORTH HAS SURPASSED THE SOUTH.

And now that we have come to the very heart and soul of our subject, we feel no disposition to mince matters, but mean to speak plainly, and to the point, without any equivocation, mental reservation, or secret evasion whatever. The son of a venerated parent, who, while he lived, was a considerate and merciful slaveholder, a native of the South, born and bred in North Carolina, of a family whose home has been in the valley of the Yadkin for nearly a century and a half, a Southerner by instinct and by all the influences of thought, habits, and kindred, and with the desire and fixed purpose to reside permanently within the limits of the South, and with the expectation of dying there also--we feel that we have the right to express our opinion, however humble or unimportant it may be, on any and every question that affects the public good; and, so help us God, "sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish," we are determined to exercise that right with manly firmness, and without fear, favor or affection.

Reared amidst the institution of slavery, believing it to be wrong both in principle and in practice, and having seen and felt its evil influences upon individuals, communities and states, we deem it a duty, no less than a privilege, to enter our protest against it, and to use our most strenuous efforts to overturn and abolish it! Then we are an abolitionist? Yes! not merely a freesoiler, but an abolitionist, in the fullest sense of the term. We are not only in favor of keeping slavery out of the territories, but, carrying our opposition to the institution a step further, we here unhesitatingly declare ourself in favor of its immediate and unconditional abolition, in every state in this confederacy, where it now exists! Patriotism makes us a freesoiler; state pride makes us an emancipationist; a profound sense of duty to the South makes us an abolitionist; a reasonable degree of fellow feeling for the negro, makes us a colonizationist. With the free state men in Kanzas and Nebraska, we sympathize with all our heart. We love the whole country, the great family of states and territories, one and inseparable, and would have the word Liberty engraved as an appropriate and truthful motto, on the escutcheon of every member of the confederacy. We love freedom, we hate slavery, and rather than give up the one or submit to the other, we will forfeit the pound of flesh nearest our heart. Is this sufficiently explicit and categorical? If not, we hold ourself in readiness at all times, to return a prompt reply to any proper question that may be propounded.

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